


You Say It's Enough, In Fact It's Too Much

by meratrishoslee



Series: Seven Minutes Wherever [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Light Gardening, Light Masochism, Mental Masochism, Orchids can have a good spanking -- as a treat, uncomfortable as a dom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:00:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meratrishoslee/pseuds/meratrishoslee
Summary: "Grow better when it feels threatened?"  Crowley tilted his head.  "Yeaaaaaaah, okay..."
Relationships: Crowley/Orchid
Series: Seven Minutes Wherever [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1441339
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	You Say It's Enough, In Fact It's Too Much

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all you kinky wonderful bastards who wanted to know more about the "Spank me, Daddy!" orchid. I was back and forth on whether or not this story would be mentioned even obliquely in "Seven Minutes of Eternity" -- so I'm enjoying the chance to lean into it here. Pre-Seven-Minutes-In-Hell Crowley is the universe's most uncomfortable/unwilling Dom. Hope you like this utter crack.

"If you're gonna stand there ogling it all day," said Jan in her cheerful tone, making Crowley jump, "perhaps you should go ahead and buy it?"

At this time in 1984 the gentleman had been a regular in her garden supply shop for a few years, coming in on average every two to three weeks to buy exactly one new locally-sourced potted plant -- generally of a non-flowering variety. Jan quite liked him even though his hair was awful, in the style of the times.

The plant of his current fascination was a small orchid with a few small dark green leaves, and one slender spike crowned with five closed buds and seven white flowers with golden centers. Their petals seem to be what had captivated him: he'd stood there staring down into them for just under seventeen minutes. Jan had watched the clock on the wall behind him.

"Oh!" he exhaled sharply. "Well, I uh... I've no idea how to care for such a thing. What do they generally want, do you think?"

"Well, this type can be a bit particular..." and she went on to describe how it was a tropical species, liked a relatively warm room and indirect light and to be misted regularly so as not to have its roots too wet. Mr. Crowley nodded thoughtfully.

"And they can do with a bit of abuse; tends to make them bloom more actually."

"Excuse me?" For a second she saw his eyes over the tops of his large plastic sunglasses; they were a gorgeous hazel gold.

"Well you see... I'd say that orchids are clever little things. Putting out all them blooms takes a lot of energy they could be using to grow roots or leaves. So they only do it when they feel a bit threatened, as if their situation is somehow precarious and they should be getting on about making babies." Jan grinned; she was an earthy soul. "People do that too, of course."

"Grow better when it feels threatened?" Crowley tilted his head. "Yeaaaaaaah, okay..."

Five minutes later the demon walked out of the store holding the porcelain outer pot gingerly in both hands, as if it were a bomb.

Ugh impulse buys I have no idea why I let her talk me into this and is this going to be an issue I mean I get local plants so I'm not doing any harm when I kick them out of the atrium but this is a tropical thing so I can't let it out here in Great Britain if I have to get rid of it will I need to take back to South America wait is it **from** South America oh Somebody I forgot to ask her--

No. We're not going to have any problems at all.

Only the quick glances of the strangers on the street at the tall slender man with the additional four inches of teased/sprayed crimson hair height gripping an orchid in shaking fists let Crowley know he'd spoken that last bit out loud.

No, we're not going to have any problems at all, he decided firmly and silently. This plant will be a model citizen in my atrium. 

May even teach the other lazy bastards in there a thing or too.

"Alright you blighters!" he said, removing This Week's Empty Pot from its place of prominence and sliding The Orchid onto the pedestal instead. "Here's our new member. Everyone say hello! I'm sure you all notice that they're quite a beauty! Why? Because they WORK HARD AT IT!"

The familiar shivering sussuration of a dozen local ferns and small long-leafed shrubs filled the room.

"But they could DO BETTER!" he continued, his eyes two burning orbs of sulfur behind the lenses as he bent over the orchid. "Look right there! You're dropping that bottom leaf -- don't think that I don't see it! And you've only got seven blooms, not the THIRTEEN you could be having if you just TRIED HARDER!"

The Orchid began to quiver, ever so slightly. He misted it viciously.

Crowley ranted a few moments more until all the stress of Having Bought An Unknown Thing Without Preparation had been purged, then went out to dinner and a musical with Aziraphale.

When he came back late that evening, a glance into the atrium revealed that an eighth bloom had begun to open on The Orchid.

Right then.

The week went on. The Orchid dropped the lowest and smallest leaf, leaving a sad brown shrunken husk in the pot. As if to apologize the next two buds had begun to bloom. He screamed at it, stalking around its pedestal, and it trembled in terror.

Or so he thought, to begin with.

No more leaves dropped. All the buds on the spike opened.

And the next week when he misted it he felt the distinct sensation of...

Well, it... It was smug.

Crowley ranted for an impressive length of time -- how dare you, you think you're all that huh, you're nothing, you're compost, the pot's worth more than you are, etc etc. Still The Orchid trembled and radiated eagerness.

The next day the largest flower on the Orchid wilted, and dropped to the cement floor.

The demon went incandescent with rage -- you do this just to irritate me, you're a loss, you're a sham, your parents weren't worth propagating, you're a waste of bark chips, I bought you at a garage forecourt, etc etc -- and, **just** as he was working up a magnificent head of steam, really getting into his role...

... well...

... the quivering of The Orchid drew his eye to a slender, up-turned growth amid its roots.

A second flower-spike.

After a long gray moment Crowley was aware of the fact that he was laying on his back on the kitchen tile. At some point he had gotten ice out of the freezer, filled a pack with it, and dropped it over his heated forehead and eyes.

Every time he remembered that cheeky little spike, greenish-brown and throbbing toward the light, he got wibbly in his midsection -- not quite nausea, not quite embarrassment.

This is **for _me_** , he thought in the overly warm soup of his brain. They're not supposed to **_enjoy_** it.

Nonetheless despite this minor setback, Crowley was undaunted. This wasn't the first time he'd gotten attitude from a plant before. Let us never forget the pyrrhic victory of that fichus, who'd dropped every single one of its leaves onto the floor the night after he'd first yelled at it. Or that one spider plant whose response to Crowley's "helpful growing tips" was to shove out leafy vines utterly mindlessly; it had achieved a length of about ten meters before the demon had given up, rolled it into a ball and handed it over to a local botanical group.

This was just another form of plant warfare. Just like ivy or kudzu: it was mostly a mind game. They wanted to get in your head. If they could psyche you out they'd won half the battle.

So Crowley clenched his jaw and seethed in his righteous anger, no matter how that spike grew, no matter how it budded an astounding fifteen times, no matter how The Orchid itself seemed to sigh with maidenly delight every time he roared at it.

The bloody degenerate, thought Crowley on the chilly kitchen tiles once again, blindfolded as usual with the ice-pack. Even now it sat massive and resplendent, smugly regal on its pedestal in the middle of the atrium.

But this was not his first rodeo and the demon was determined to endure and to eventually triumph. And as The Orchid's first spike dropped its blooms one by one while it continued to quiver helplessly in the face of Crowley's ire, he began to believe he'd won.

Until the day he came into the atrium and found one tiny green bud sprouting at the tip of the empty spike -- and the whole room smelt of arousal and satisfaction.

Crowley about-faced, and practically **_fled_** to the only sanctuary that could possibly help him now.

It's not like he could have asked Jan about this, obviously. Jan would have said all sorts of suggestive things. He'd never have been able to look her in the face again.

"Yes of course I have books on orchids, they're over here in the green-thumb section -- but what on Earth has you so--"

"Later angel, later," he mollified Aziraphale, easing past him and dropping into a leather chair to put his pointed nose down into the first tome he could find.

It didn't take long to find an explanation for the phenomenon, because it was quite a common perversion: the little bud was called a "keiki". It was what happened when an orchid reproduces. Asexually. 

His Orchid was making a baby.

The book shook in his hands.

This was the plant version of "If you're not going to get me off, I'll do it myself!"

Crowley dropped the hardcover on the table as if it had burned him. "I'll see you tomorrow, Aziraphale."

"Yes but I thought we might could--"

"I've got an errand to run--" even as he sprinted toward the door.

"-- since you're already here--"

"I've got to go to the shops!" he panted, pushing past a customer headed in. 

He couldn't remember the ride home but that was fine; he was sure the Bentley would have spoken up if he'd accidentally disincorporated someone.

"YOU!" he snarled.

The rest of the atrium occupants flinched backward. The Orchid sat in splendid isolation, and radiated its satisfaction. 

Without another word he picked it up by its pot and carried it at arm-length back outside. He put it in the passenger seat of the Bentley and buckled it in. 

"I can't believe this," he muttered morosely. "I can't even bear to look at you."

One short ride later and he was climbing out in the parking lot of Jan's shop. The bell over the door jingled.

"Why Mr. Crowley, so good to--"

"I need to return this," he said, thumping the pot down onto the counter and scrubbing his hands on the thighs of his black jeans.

"Well, I can only do exchanges in the first--"

"I don't care about the money, or exchanges." He drew in a deep breath. "I just need you to take it back. I can't have it round any more. S'no good."

Jan turned the pot in wondering, dirt-stained hands. The orchid had certainly grown since she'd sold it -- even put out another spike. And was this...?

"Oh, you've got a little baby coming in! Why, look how happy this orchid is. You've treated it quite well. You must be such a good plant daddy!"

He braced his palms on the counter and bent forward, queasy, his hair-spray failing somewhat from all the stress. "Please just... don't ever say... those words like that. Ever again."

"Awww. So you're sure, then?"

"Yes. I'm sure. Just..."

He looked at The Orchid. The Orchid looked back at him -- all gold and white and green and yearning. Crowley shut his eyes.

"Just... treat it very kindly, will you?"

And he left the shop, and did not return for several months.

Decades later he learned what BDSM was, and that some individuals quite fancied a bit of pain and abuse every now and again -- and he remembered The Orchid, and experienced a number of emotions he didn't yet have names for.

_On their wedding night, finally alone in their honeymoon suite, the masochist begged "Whip me, beat me!"_

_And the sadist answered: "No, my love – I will not."_

**Author's Note:**

> * The title is of course from Queen's "Get Down, Make Love"
> 
> * Crowley's enthralled by white and gold on a plant. Hmmm.
> 
> * In my head-casting, the role of Jan is played by [Olivia Colman](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1469236/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t30).
> 
> * Crowley has the most egregious example of eighties' hair to ever have eighties' or hair'd. Just take a moment and revel in that magnificent mental image.
> 
> * [And not a cheap posey from a garage forecourt.](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/068bb62a-3e87-42f5-ba47-316b4faed257)
> 
> * I'm not saying a floral-spike is an erection, but I'm totally saying a floral-spike is an erection.
> 
> * Also if someone would like to discuss the BDSM implications of Mr. Gray owning lots of orchids in the movie "Secretary", well -- I'm your huckleberry.
> 
> * Crowley buckled the orchid into the Bentley because no matter your emotional circumstances, you don't risk the health or well-being of an expectant mother. It's just not done.
> 
> * And yes, Crowley is _absolutely_ dressed up like the Cure. I mean, just drink in this demisexual severely repressed disaster snake in his viciously eighties hair. He may have a rabbit's foot hanging from one of the loops of his leather jacket -- but if he does, he feels really bad about it.
> 
> * "Plant daddy." Yeah, I went there.
> 
> * Okay, if you want the visual that was guiding me through the course of this particular dynamic, [I want you to watch this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB7R0ZxNgC4)


End file.
